Monday, July 30, 2012

Self Publishing, Vanity Press or Do-It-Yourself-ers

Chapter
4

Self
Publishing, Vanity Press or Do-It-Yourself-ers

“Vanity is my favorite sin.” ~ Al Pacino

Self publishing, publish on
demand, traditional, and now the New Publishing. Publishers everywhere and so
many choices what’s a writer to do? Before you get all quivering and quaking
with fear and a need to pop a Xanax to calm your nerves, keep reading. We want
to help alleviate a quick trip to the pharmacy to consume anti-depressants to
manage your publishing anxiety. First, like the warning label on any good
prescription bottle or Diet Coke can, we want to not just warn you, but beg you
to educate yourself before you sign on the line on any contracts you may have
placed in front of you. And this may be hard to control yourself too. Any time
a so-called publisher or someone with the title of publisher calls and says
they want to publish your manuscript refrain from the happy dance just yet.

Our sad cautionary tale comes
from a 95-year-old World War II veteran we’ll call Stew. Poor Stew searched for
the perfect publisher of his war stories and found one. So grateful and pleased
to have his legacy in print, he signed – and he signed away all of his rights
to future work to that same publisher. The unscrupulous publisher didn’t
deliver on a single promise – yet they still have “first right of refusal” on
any piece of literature the poor old guy produces. He sadly shows up at 3L and
wants us to publish his new book, which was very good. Unfortunately, when he
reported his contractual obligation with the first publisher we were forced to
turn him away. This sad story is common – and please don’t let it be you who
comes begging for assistance after being swindled out of your literary
“rights.”

Now that said, you may be
tempted more than ever to toss in the towel and just self publish. Well, we
have some information to share about self publishing. Before we launch into it,
we’re going to stray to a Smart Girl’s technique, which is to give you The
Good, The Bad and The Brutally Ugly, because self publishing deserves its own
special treatment in this respect.

The
Good

Smart Girls

I flunked English, but that doesn’t mean
anything, does it?

The self publisher knows
without question that she is a writer not an editor or graphic designer. She
writes her book and then hires an editor to clean it up and eliminate typos,
style and grammar errors, and anything questionable content-wise. She then
researches and finds a talented graphic artist and does not sit down and
attempt to draw stick figures. The Good relies on her graphic artist to do her
job and follow a bona fide template for the book’s interior design. The Good
doesn’t try and purchase a copy of InDesign and attempt the impossible – learn
a program that takes years of skill to use. The Good does take her
professionally edited and designed manuscript to a reputable printer and has a
perfect-bound book created. The Good doesn’t attempt to do her own PR and does
hire a proper publicist who will do everything possible to avoid letting anyone
know the books was self published. The Good has a professionally designed
website created for her and leverages her writing talent to blog and support
her book. She also has the PR expert write the media kit and fully understands
it’s not a good idea to attempt to do this without help. The Good also
understands that because she self published her chances of getting national
distribution are next to nil – but that’s OK. She is really only using her book
to get speaking gigs and help grow her primary business, which involves
seminars and workshops – all based, of course, on her self-published book that
now people “oooh” and “aaahhh” over, because she did such a good job.

The
Bad

The bad don’t believe they need
an editor – heck I’ll just do it myself. The Bad don’t have any training in
editing, and don’t know anything about style … “Style? What style?” They just
figure they can save money, because, “Hell, I know how to use a period.” The
Bad also go out and purchase a copy of InDesign and start trying to use it.
After much cursing and frustration, they toss it out and figure, “Well, then
what’s a word processor for anyway? I’ll just make me a Microsoft template.”
The Bad then shrink the margins in an attempt to create the correct format. The
Bad then simply put words in place of a cover, call around to find a few
printers, find one, and soon realize they don’t get it when the printer asks,
“What size template do you want?” They don’t know how to resize it anyway and
take it down to the printer to have the printer’s $10 an hour designer slap it into
a pre-made template for printing. The Bad then get their book off press – no
design, spelling and grammar errors and all. They look around, call Grandma and
cry, “Hey there Granny, $12 bucks get you my book.” Granny buys it, forces her
friends to buy it, and coerces the rest of the family to buy lest she cut them
out of her will. The writer makes $50 for sales to reluctant family members and
ends up with 2,000 copies all sitting, gathering dust in the shed.

The
Brutally Ugly

The Brutally Ugly didn’t pass
high school English. In fact, the Brutally Ugly really don’t like to write –
but want to be famous for something … anything. The Brutally Ugly write their
memoir about their first trip to the North Carolina pig farm – and how they
fell in love with a pink sow named Wanda, but Wanda got slaughtered. They cried
for weeks and then decided to write a book on cruelty to animals and “screw
bacon” pass me the ham. They attempt to illustrate their book with hand-drawn
pictures of Wanda and use red crayon to illustrate the slaughter. They take the
drawings and the printout to Kinko’s and make an original copy that they then
have Joe Bob behind the counter create 100 copies of their masterpiece, “Don’t
Kill Wanda!” for $30 each copy. They get “Don’t Kill Wanda,” and think, “What a
beautiful book. Now I’m famous.” They try to sell copies to PETA, but PETA
turns them down and muses over the hand-drawn pictures, laughing the whole
time. They try to sell it to their family members and eventually their mother
purchases a copy just so she can tell everyone her daughter is a published
author … “See! I’m so proud.” And even though they should throw away this piece
of junk, they drag it out every Christmas just to show their grand children
that, “Look your Aunt wrote a book.” The smaller children cry when they see the
slaughter drawings and the older children think their aunt is really weird.

You’re so Vain You Probably
Think this Book is about You

So
the reality of self publishing can get really ugly, which is why we started
saying, “Lift a rock find a writer.” We joke about that all the time. Some may
find it offensive; but you will not find it offensive when you find yourself
putting $29.99 on the counter to purchase what turns into an agonizing reading
adventure into a book filled with typos, grammar errors, and little to no
coherent intellectual reasoning or sound story structure. “How can this be?”
you wonder as you flip to the last page to read the bio. You soon realize the
book was published by a little-known press called Bear Skin Leather Co. Where
are they located? In a little town called Patterson, Calif. You grow
suspicious. I didn’t know there was a publisher in Patterson? You scratch your
head and then do a Google search. Nope, no website either. Here is the real
deal: You just got cheated out of $29.99 by Bob who printed the book under a
self-made publishing house that is no more than his basement. Welcome to vanity
press. Where all humans on the planet with no training can write their life
stories even if they were raised on a potato farm in Idaho and have absolutely
nothing meaningful to say except: “Well them there potatoes … they taste good.”

Vanity
press became a more popular publishing method after the computer and digital
printing brought the costs down to a level that the average person could
afford. The advent of new publishing technology brought on a tidal wave of some
good, but mostly bad books to flood the market. Many want-to-be authors got it
into their minds that they could surly become millionaires by publishing on
their own – no experience but a lot of moxie and enthusiasm. Many of these
authors also approached overseas publishers that will produce even cheaper books
– all for a price. Yes, they produce books all right – did we mention that
“piece-of-crap” problem? Yes, I think we did. So yes in today’s world anyone
can publish a book – but not necessarily a good book.

Looks Like a Pig, Quacks Like a
Duck

Smart
Girls

Avoid
the stigma of self publishing. We want your money not your book.

Now
we’re giving vanity press a bad rap. Reality is that vanity press – while it
opens the market to everyone who has a book idea – can work for some (depends
on what you’re going to do with the book) and not for others. You can purchase
editorial and graphic services and create your own custom publication – and
that is how it will be viewed by the media. It is very difficult to overcome
set ideas about vanity press with the media too.

Why
do you suppose that is when not all self published books are bad? Well, who
works predominantly for the print media in particular? Writers … ding, ding,
ding. You got it. And most writers often can spot your weak writing from a mere
glance. The other thing you should know. Writers can be contentious and jealous
types. If they can’t overcome the hurdles presented by a traditional publisher
your attempt at writing what in their minds looks like amateur hour ultimately
pushes buttons. All one has to do is hang out in a few writer’s groups and
watch the jealousy and tantrums start. The book reviewers will see a homemade
tome – and without flipping open a page throw it in their “special” file.

Why do so many folks have set
ideas about vanity press? Back to the real professionals who know their stuff.
Let’s say you’ve sent your custom publication to an editor. One thing you need
to know. Editors read piles and piles of submissions and press releases. They
can spot the good from the bad. They live with deadlines. If you have not gone that
extra mile to attempt to put your perhaps well-written book into a traditional,
perfect-bound format it most likely will come in a spiral binding … or worse
stapled together. What message does that send? Oh, I know. Cheap, amateur and
lame … seriously I know you may not want to hear this information; but it is
the editor’s super secret thoughts. How do we know? Michelle (2L) was a
professional editor for 10 years. She read and saw it all. And as much as it
frustrates all you vanity press fans to hear this information: We all naturally
make assumptions – especially when pressed for time. The natural assumption
when one sees a spiral-bound book is it’s not good. So strike one.

Smart
Girls

The
Dude: These are, uh... Brandt:
Oh, those are Mr Lebowski's children, so to speak. The
Dude: Different mothers, huh? Brandt:
No. The
Dude: Racially he's pretty cool? Brandt:
[laughs] They're not literally his children. They're the Little Lebowski
Urban Achievers - inner city children of promise but without the necessary
means for a - necessary means for a higher education. So Mr Lebowski is
committed to sending all of them to college. ~ The Big Lebowski

The Big Book of Lebowski

Now
to be fair, vanity press can work quite well if you intend to use your book as
a product to do back-of-the-room sales. Back-of-the-room sales may also help
alleviate the spiral-binding problem. Now you can actually use the spiral-binding
“perception” to leverage and increase sales. How’s that you wonder? Buyers now
know this book is a custom job. What do all custom jobs cost? More money than
mass-produced books, and oh so that $39.99 price tag on this custom job written
by hopefully the girl who just gave an amazing talk on her subject of expertise
costs more. OK, as a consumer I can accept the extra price. Now you have an
actual reason to do a limited print run and charge more on a custom project.
Just realize that wasting money and sending it to the local book reviewer will
not fool them.

Smart Self Publishers Win

The
real lesson is to be strategic in why you intend to self publish. You can make
the self-publishing model work in your favor if you have a strategy behind it.
If you’re going to use a self-published book as a giveaway at seminars and
workshops or as a handout, that is good. People will perceive the value of this
kind of publication and appreciate the spirit in which it is given and used. A
typo in a self-published book used in this nature gets forgiven. The grammar
police put away their rifles and guns. And you can sell it for top dollar – as
we said people know it cost more to produce and respect the extra cost.

On
the flipside self publishing a book and trying to make it masquerade as a book
published by a traditional publishing house – and it is chockfull of errors and
generally looks cheap and tacky – continues to create a fog of doubt. Yes,
self-published books exist that are well-done, but these books are largely in
the minority. We can stand 10 feet back from a self-published book and know it
came off a self-publisher’s press, which isn’t necessarily a bad press; but an
air of “something’s not right” looms over these self-published books and gives
it away. To the less-seasoned eye it might seem to blend right in with the
others; but the ones in the know like the media and book reviewers – well, they
always know. And the self-published book, which may we add probably cost a lot
if you had it perfect bound, loses credibility and will not be given proper
respect, reviews or accolades – all needed to help it reach a mass audience.

The
real question becomes, why are you self publishing in the first place? Are you
fed up with traditional publishing and want your book faster than 18 months
(see chapter on traditional publishing). Are you afraid your writing will be
deemed unfit to publish so you are trying alternatives? Or are you using your
book to support your business and have no expectation that it will be a
best-seller? No matter the reason you’ve chosen to self publish, the rule for
success requires you not eschew important professional help like an editor or
graphic designer. Maybe your self-published book is a prize winner in the
making. Good for you. Maybe you have friends at a major distributor who will
help get it distributed as an independent book and you want to keep 100 percent
of your royalties. OK, sounds reasonable to us; but chances are you have none
of the advantages. Statistics show that most self-published books sell no more
than 50-100 copies – hardly enough to make it a best seller and generate any
significant profits. So before you spend upward of $5,000 to $10,000 to wind up
with 2,000 copies of a book that may never see the light of a Borders book
shelf, consider your options carefully and keep reading.

If you would like to work with 3L Publishing, which is a hybrid publisher not a vanity press, please call us at 916-300-8012 or send an email to info@3LPublishing.com.

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About Me

I am a publisher, author, produced screenwriter and outspoken funny girl. You never know what I'm going to say on this blog. Could be straightforward and serious, or it could be cheeky and funny -- it all depends on what's on my mind. If something sounds "off," it's more likely said tongue-in-cheek than serious.
I like nothing better than to crack up, and when I'm working to crack myself up! Life's too short to take it seriously. Authors who work with me always have a good time. You will never find anything conservative or boring around here! Visit my website at www.3LPublishing.com.
I am publishing a new book very soon titled Body in the Trunk. Look for a winter 2014 release.